Research project

Fire Radiative Power Validation

Project overview

Satellite observations are a key tool in estimating the fuel consumption and smoke emissions from landscape fires due to their spatial and temporal variability. One such approach is through the measurement the of the radiative emission from actively burning fires, the so-called Fire Radiative Power (FRP). FRP data are now routinely used to estimate fuel consumption and trace gas emissions in systems such as the operational Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service. The aims of this project are to validate satellite FRP retrievals from MODIS, VIIRS and SLSTR using observations from helicopter mounted thermal cameras over prescribed burns in Kruger National Park (KNP). A secondary aim of this research is to characterise the seasonal variability of ‘emission factors’ which specify the chemical species release rate (e.g. CO2, CO, CH4, NOx etc) per unit fuel consumed.

Staff

Lead researchers

Dr Gareth Roberts

Associate Professor

Research interests

  • Development of methods for monitoring fire activity and estimating emissions using remotely sensed data
  • Quantifying the environmental and health impacts of landscape fires using remote sensing
  • Thermal remote sensing of urban areas
Connect with Gareth

Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs

Gareth Roberts, Martin Wooster, Nicolas Lauret, Jean-Philippe Gastellu-Etchegory, Timothy Lynham & Doug McRae, 2018, Remote Sensing of Environment, 217, 158-171
Type: article
Gareth Roberts, Martin Wooster, Weidong Xu & Jiangping He, 2018, Remote Sensing, 10(10), 1-22
Type: article